A Miracle Story

This appeared this week in an online Orthodox parish bulletin in a friend’s parish. She knows the people to whom this happened. It has to do with a Greek Orthodox saint Nektarios of Aegina. I’ve slightly edited this to protect the privacy of the people to whom this happened. Read:

Over the summer, OCF [Orthodox Christian Fellowship -- RD] members MS and ND traveled to Aegina to visit the monastery and to pray at the tomb of St. Nektarios. Following the customary practice of pilgrims, the two members prayed with their ear against the tomb. This practice originates in the commonly manifested wonder of pilgrims hearing the sound of the Saint’s feet tapping or shuffling within the tomb.

ND and MS both listened intently with their ears to the tomb… and heard nothing. ND decided to continue walking the premises, while MS stayed a bit longer with the Saint. MS prayed some more and pressed her ear against the tomb. This second time, she heard the sound of tapping. The sound was strong. She pulled away from the tomb, and noticed that the sound was continuing, within her. She placed her hand on the ear which had been on the tomb, and realized that there was oil on it; the tomb of St. Nektarios had streamed a miraculous oil. This was a special encounter indeed with [their] OCF [chapter] patron, St. Nektarios.

While this was happening, another OCF student, MR, was here in [state]. She knew that MS and ND were visiting Aegina, but she had never heard of the custom of pilgrims praying with their ears to the tomb. While ND and MS were at the tomb physically, MR was at the tomb with them… in a dream. She remembers it vividly. The three of them were standing together, ears pressed to the tomb. MR asked the Saint how she could have stronger faith. The Saint rose up and told her “if you can see me and hear me, then you have strong faith”. MR’s mother had fallen asleep in the Lord about a year earlier, and prayer for her had become a struggle. Her encounter with the Saint greatly comforted her.

Both of these miracles occurred the day before Dormition, which is MS’ and MR’s feast day.

MR didn’t find out about the miracle that occurred to MS and ND until their priest mentioned it in his homily the following Sunday.

What do you make of that? As an Orthodox Christian, I believe this account. Or, to be specific, I believe this sort of thing can happen, and does happen; I believe this specific event happened because I trust the friend who related it to me.

I’m wondering a couple of things. First, what do Christians from other traditions make of this story? Catholics, I should think, would have no problem with it. Protestants? I don’t know.

Second, what do people of non-Christian religions, or no religious belief at all, make of it? I wonder this myself about apparent miracles, or at least supernatural events, in other faiths. I believe they can and do happen, but I don’t know what they mean. False miracles — that is, apparent miracles worked by malignant spiritual entities — occur. But does God work miracles outside the Christian faith? I think He can — He is God, after all, and He loves all his people — but I strongly hesitate to pronounce that an apparent miracle outside of the bounds of Biblical religion (Christianity and Judaism) is valid. This, not because I think God doesn’t work miracles in the lives of non-Jews and non-Christians, but because I lack the competence to discern what they might mean, or even if they are valid.

(I wish to draw a sharp distinction between “miracle” and “supernatural activity.” A miracle, in the sense I mean, is an event that contradicts the received laws of the material universe, and cannot be rationally explained. It has an objective quality, in the sense that it can be verified by others, or at least it was something the person experiencing it observed with their senses, not their imagination. By “supernatural activity,” I mean things like poltergeists and other spirits, which I have encountered on more than one occasion, in the presence of others who experienced them as well.)

From an Orthodox Christian point of view, we are not obliged to believe in any apparent miracle outside of the deposit of faith. That is, someone can come home from a trip with a story about a miracle at St. Nektarios’s tomb, and we are not less of a Christian if we choose not to believe their story. But I think it’s worth considering the point Prof. Jeffrey Kripal of Rice University makes in his strange and challenging book Authors Of The Impossible, which I reviewed once upon a time for Real Clear Religion. I began my mentioning a paranormal experience I had, and that my family shared, but that most of my secular materialist friends dismiss as impossible, because it does not fit the way they understand the world to work. Excerpt:

And yet, countless people — of all faiths, and of no faith at all — have paranormal experiences, and know they are not crazy. “Just how long can we go on like this until we admit that there is real data, and that we haven’t the slightest idea where to put it?” asks Jeffrey Kripal, head of Rice University’s religious studies department. Kripal poses the question in his provocative new book “Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred,” in which he contends that both orthodox religion and orthodox science foolishly deny things like ghosts, UFOs, telepathy and suchlike because manifestations of the paranormal may violate both religious dogma and what Max Weber (quoted by Kripal) calls “the iron cage of modern rationalism, order, and routinization.”

Kripal’s personal viewpoint on all this is slippery. He says he neither believes nor disbelieves – not because he’s trying to avoid taking a position, but because of his theory about what the mind and human personality are. This requires some unpacking. In Kripal’s view, the mind and consciousness are far more complex than science and religion think, which renders our various interpretive models inadequate to explain reality. Kripal doesn’t propose a clear alternative, though he does propose that in some way, human consciousness helps create reality through its interaction with the material world, much as we have learned from quantum physics the fantastical lesson that a conscious observer helps determine physical outcomes at the quantum level. He doesn’t believe UFOs are hallucinations or creatures from outer space, for example, but theorizes that UFOs are a a real phenomenon that is, in some dimly understood way, a result of human consciousness interacting with the universe.

If this sounds impossibly New Age, well, it kind of is. But this is precisely where Kripal wants to take the reader by the collar and say, “Not so fast!” The kind of characters we dismiss as kooks may in fact be kooky — but their very distance from the mainstream may help them to see things as they are more clearly, or at least to ask questions that are important, but embarrassing to the right-minded. This is why he turns to a handful of outsider figures, both historical and contemporary, in his search for forgotten insights. One of them, the 20th century American eccentric Charles Fort, described as “damned” information and phenomena discarded by dominant intellectual paradigms. Fort was a legendary curator of the damned, and though he entertained some thoroughly crackpot notions, Kripal values him for paying attention to things respectable intellectuals ignored.

So, what do you think happened to these people at the tomb of St. Nektarios? Why do you interpret this as you do?

UPDATE: Let me explain a little more what I’m after here. I’m asking about epistemology — how do we know what we know? Is there truly an objective way of knowing, one accessible to everyone?

Let’s say that our friend Jim Bob goes on a trip to India, finds himself in an ashram, and has a mystical experience involving a sexual encounter with the goddess Kali — one that is witnessed by a fellow visitor to the ashram. What happened?

1) Nothing happened. Goddesses don’t exist. Jim Bob and his roommate had a hallucination, or someone in a costume played a hell of a trick on them. (Scientific materialist)

2) Jim Bob was sexually assaulted by a noncorporeal entity of indeterminate nature in the guise of a Hindu goddess. (New Age/Pagan)

3) Jim Bob was sexually assaulted by a demon. (traditional Christian)

4) Jim Bob had sex with Kali. (Hindu)

5) Your guess is as good as anybody’s.

There are other interpretations, of course. What would a believing Jew make of such a tale? A Muslim? A Mainline Protestant?

For me, as an Orthodox Christian, two options are open to me: Nothing happened, and Jim Bob and roommate hallucinated the whole thing, or was the victim of an elaborate prank; or Jim Bob was assaulted by a demon. My interpretive framework by definition excludes that he had sex with Kali (I don’t believe Kali exists) or was assaulted by a spiritual entity that might not be evil. I can’t think of another explanation within the framework I believe to be true.

But how do I know that my way of interpreting these things is true, or at least more true than the Hindu, or Wiccan, or scientific materialist? Each epistemology draws lines that exclude other possibilities. Scientific materialism cannot accept a religious interpretation. But what if a religious interpretation (Hindu, Christian, Jewish, etc.) is closer to what the phenomenon actually is?

This is what I’m getting at. I don’t have an answer, but I think about this stuff a lot.

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66 Responses to A Miracle Story

I know people who are perfectly sane, absolutely normal and conventional, who have said to me perfectly seriously that they have spoken with their guardian angel (who even told them its name), seen Saint Thárèse of Lisieux, left their body, seen their reflection move by itself, and in general have reported all kinds of unusual things. In no case was there the slightest evidence that any of these people was crazy, unbalanced or abnormal in any way; exteriorly, in fact, they all seemed totally normal and even boring.

I actually seem to be a magnet for this kind of discussion, since I always take people seriously and don’t dismiss what they say. I can’t say I’ve really had any paranormal experiences as such. I’ve had one or two dreams that seemed supernatural and scary, but which I’m not sure how to evaluate. During a time in my life when I used to do intense meditation regularly, I’ve had a couple weird experiences, one of which (during a period of tonglen meditation) I interpreted as absorbing the negative emotions of a friend going through a rough time but who wasn’t actually present. I’ve also had a couple of mildly interesting experiences doing tai chi ch’uan. Beyond that, things have been pretty much standard issue for me.

The only miracle I’m dogmatically committed to believing is the Resurrection of Christ. I think most New Testament miracles probably happened, though I doubt most of the Old Testament literally happened. I think many real miracles, both in Christian and non-Christian contexts occur and continue to occur, but are rare. For any given claim, I tend to hold back with a wait-and-see attitude.

My overall attitude is pretty much like that of Kripal, whose works I recommend. I’d also recommend, especially to the more skeptical, the excellent The Trickster and the Paranormal, by George Hansen. His basic thesis is that the paranormal by its very nature is something that can’t be processed by the rational part of the human mind. Thus, though it’s real, it’s closely associated with chaos, randomness, and even fakery (many known fakers nevertheless performed some feats that have never been adequately debunked). To try to study it scientifically is like trying to pick out colors in a black-and-white movie–the rationality of science is the wrong tool for studying the phenomena. It is a challenging and fascinating book, slow in places, but well worth reading.

What a coincidence (or not)! In my Bible study group tonight we read and discussed Acts 16. One of the events is the demon-possessed, fortune-telling slave girl. The discussion was about whether or not she could actual tell the future or if the demon was just a very good guesser because of supreme intelligence. I honestly don’t know. My Evangelical apologetics formation once had me skeptical of nearly anything supernatural (odd, I know, but way too common). Now I am much more open. (I was never totally closed off because Christ appeared to me when I was 5 and healed me of cystic fibrosis; that event has never been in question to me).

Rod, could you elaborate on your poltergeist story? I read your review. Why was a Cajun psychic called on? Did he and the exorcist say the same things? I’m not being critical. I’m just curious.

[NFR: I happened to be in town from Washington for my grandfather's funeral. I was a Catholic convert at the time, and knew an exorcist priest. The "Cajun psychic" was a very devoutly Catholic older lady who had a powerful gift of discernment that she used to help the priest in his work. I called Father T. to invite him to come bless the house, and he brought the lady along to see what, if anything, she could detect. -- RD]

I think you know my response to your hypothetical–5. I don’t have sufficient data to make a judgement. But as Hamlet said to Horatio, there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies, or our religions.

Now, let us look at the miracle. First, there could be a perfectly natural reason for the sound of feet shuffling and tapping. If a spectral voice came saying, “Let me OUT!” that would be different and yes I”m having fun, but you do have to be careful with just sounds. They can come from a lot of things. The oil is more interesting. It is doubtful that she dipped her ear in oil before putting on the tomb so that may be a genuine phenomenon. As far as the dream goes, that is iffy. Interesting, but something I would base a judgement on unless the dream revealed something that no one else could have known about. It is possible that she could have somehow heard of the custom and consciously forgotten it, but subconsciously remembered. We just don’t know.

It would be interesting to actually use the technology of ghost hunting by that tomb to see if there is anything going on that people are not seeing. But I would caution against using remote viewing. I tried that once and had a dreadful surprise.

I guess I’m conflicted about these sorts of stories. I personally tend to be strongly influenced by what I’ve seen and experienced–that’s had a much stronger impact on my outlook than trying to reason things out from first principles. So I’m not naturally inclined to say “that’s impossible” when presented with what seems like someone else’s credible story of a miraculous or supernatural experience. On the other hand, I’ve never had any experiences that I felt were entirely inexplicable, so my personal reaction when I hear other people relate these kinds of stories is to assume that there’s some kind of unremarkable explanation (coincidence, psychology, etc.), and that if I’d been in their shoes I would have interpreted the events in a way that didn’t seem to require a supernatural or miraculous explanation.

How does a Muslim react to this? Well, it depends on what kind of Muslim he/she is. Traditional Muslims have little problem with miracles, even when outside the sphere of their faith. But new zealots have all kinds of problem with it. Let me give you an example: around 30 years ago when I was a child, every Christmas, the Iranian state owned TV showed the movie: “The Song of Bernadette,” and that after Islamic revolution! People liked it, religious people, especially old folks, loved it. Year after year they watched it, and some cried. There was nothing which they deemed Islamically un-orthodox about it; nothing would be more natural than Hadhrate Maryam bestowing her grace upon a poor village girl. But then the new revolutionaries, mostly leftist modernist Islamists, decided to protest the propagation of “superstitions,” and it was the end of it.
I also remember there was a movie about the little Saint Theresa, again on Iran’s State TV a few years ago, and my grandmother and I were watching. This was a French movie about the saint, and it introduced this saint of pure soul to me. My grandmother, an illiterate and religious woman, was watching it, completely mesmerized by the sanctity of the saint, while repeating in a low voice the blessing on Prophet.
Well, of course that was a Shi’ite environment, where the saints and their intercession are more easily accepted than in the Sunni world, not to mention the world of Salafism/Wahabism. But Salfai/Wahabi movement itself is mostly a modern one.

[NFR: That is absolutely remarkable, your stories about these movies on Iranian TV. Thanks for sharing them. -- RD]

And what was the point of this miracle? Of all the things in the world that could be cured/righted the saint chooses to pick some people to reafform their fate. How selfish.

[NFR: This is the kind of response I'll never understand: the idea that because God, or a saint, chooses to behave in a way that one wouldn't have done oneself, the putatively divine act must be either false, or morally wrong. -- RD]

I think it has taken quite a bit of time for the truth of the fact that Christianity is an open future reality to be realized. And not all people who identify as such believe it.

“If I leave some things to my helpers, as an administrator, that does not mean I close off part of the future to my sight. But if I do not limit myself in terms of what I could know, and what I would do, it would soon ruin the operation. Limiting myself(holding back) is not the same as closing it off. Omniscience refers to knowing absolutely everything. But not knowing everything by choice, without defeating purposes, is also real. And human interaction with an administrator obviously modifies what is or is not done. Not to believe this is the main reason very few people pray in any sensible or effectual manner”. Dallas Willard, Dec 9, 2009.

Per Shakespeare: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” I agree.

I’ve never had a paranormal experience, but I know several very sound people, not given to flights of fancy, who have. I believe in the miracles, especially those commonly accepted as such, in the New Testament. I agree with Turmarion and absolutely believe in the bodily Resurrection of Jesus.

Many saints, as well as others, around the world, over history, have had visions, etc., that are not explained by science. I greatly respect science, and don’t believe in fundamentalist creationism, but we are limited by our five senses in being able to tap into truth and reality. I’ve never understood the belief that if we cannot prove there is a God, there must not be one. I can’t even tell you what’s around a corner or what will happen in five minutes. Dogs can hear sounds I cannot. I understand agnosticism, but not atheism.

One of the nice things about an agnostic approach is that I don’t have to have to make anything of it at all.

Strictly speaking, I don’t have enough information to make any judgement whatsoever because, at the most basic level, I don’t even know that Rod’s friend exists. It is possible that he made the story up entirely.

Now, I don’t think that Rod has done this, but that is only because I’ve been reading him long enough to believe that Rod doesn’t make up stories like this for his column. So let’s assume this person exists and told him about this.

Next point, it is possible that Rod mis-heard or misunderstood what his friend told him. Since Rod is a reporter and has long experience in hearing and recording related stories, I give this one a low probability, but I don’t discount the possibility entirely.

Next point, is it possible that Rod’s friend made up the story. Of course it is possible. Is it probable? On this, I only have Rod’s opinion of his friend, so would have to base my opinion on how good Rod is as a judge of character. Of that, I have only limited information. I think he has self-reported being bamboozled by people before – I seem to recall something about a statue at a religious location that was associated with a priest who turned out to be deceiving Rod.

And this brings up an important point – I should, at this point, dig into the archives of Rod’s writings to confirm my memory of this so that I would be able to make a better assessment of my opinion of my ability to judge Rod’s ability to assess other people’s truthfulness.

But let’s assume that we can take Rod’s word that his friend is not lying to him. The next point to consider is whether or not his friend is accurately reporting her experience to Rod. On that matter, I have absolutely no information on which to form an opinion.

So at this point, I must stop because I have no reliable information on which to form an opinion.

Rod asks: Is there truly an objective way of knowing, one accessible to everyone?

The best answer I can give is that this could be true for phenomena that is observable, repeatable, and verifiable. For everything else, certain knowledge is unlikely.

I believe this story. As an evangelical, it doesn’t have the significance that it would have for an Orthodox believer, but I certainly believe it’s real, and I am encouraged by it.

I’ve often wondered whether God speaks to Christians (and performs miracles in their lives) according to their tradition. So the miraculous works He does for a Pentecostal will differ from those He does for a Baptist, likewise a Catholic, etc. He loves His people, and meets them according to their own perspective, even while He remains transcendent.

The sad thing is when one category of Christians belittles miraculous works among the others. So the story you described at the tomb would be dismissed by some in the evangelical community as either untrue, or diabolical. A testimony about an unasked for speaking in tongues or a miraculous healing would be similarly dismissed by many doctrinal Calvinists. I truly believe that God’s kingdom manifests itself in many ways, to give encouragement and comfort to His people.

Okay, fine, hearing some tapping noises and finding out that the stone you had your ear on was a bit greasy are vastly more likely to be the result of everyday, prosaic, materialist causes than to be the result of supernatural divination… How do I know this? Because it’s simple common sense. I mean, we don’t even have to invoke Hume’s maxim here, because neither tapping noises or greasy stone are violations or suspensions of natural law. If believers want to claim this sort of thing as a “miracle” they’re certainly welcome to, and other people are welcome to believe them, but there’s nothing here that seems especially difficult to explain from a scientific/materialist standpoint. Perhaps the tapping noises are caused by rodents, or are transferred sound from an adjacent room or structure (sound travels quite readily through solid materials), or are from other pilgrims all rustling and shuffling for position… How many people have put their ears up to the tomb to hear these mysterious noises over the years? I’d be surprised if the tomb wasn’t all oily…I mean, my cell-phone screen needs to be wiped down a few times a day, and I’m the only one who uses it.

Note, I’m not saying miracles are necessarily impossible, I’m saying that this seems more like a combination of willing gullibility and over-active imagination.

I’m Catholic & used to work for someone who was Greek Orthodox.The Orthodox priest would come annually to bless the building.
I have no problem with miracles, but think one should use discernment & caution.
Supernatural manifestations are not always benign.
But I absolutely believe in the communion of saints & that those in Heaven can intercede for us in miraculous ways.

My theological framework suggests that it is highly unlikely that the corpses or spiritys of dead Christians like to make obscure tapping noises, and I don’t attribute any special power/influence to saints. I am inclined towards the idea that the dead are nowhere until the general resurrection after Christ’s second coming, though I don’t insist on that interpretation.

My personal experience leads me to be skeptical of supernatural/paranormal experiences, because I have never had any inexplicable experiences, even in environments where some people would claim such activity is very common.

My (admittedly incomplete) understanding of psychology and neuroscience suggests that humans are wired to see agency even where none exists and often fit unrelated events into narratives. Memory is more malleable than we would like to believe, and first person narratives in the absence of physical evidence are inherently unreliable (this is becoming more and more evident in criminal cases).

So, I don’t know, but my inclination based on all of the above is to interpret your friend’s story as an interesting manifestation of the odd ways in which the human mind works.

In thinking about these events, I would ask if there is a specific reason in Orthodox theology that a saint would choose to manifest by making tapping sounds, and why would the tomb ooze oil? When MS realized that there was oil on her ear, was she certain that the oil had not been on the tomb all along? What were the specific characteristics of the substance that caused her to to immediately assume the oil was miraculous? What was the lighting like? Could oil have been placed there by a priest or another parisioner? Was it a cleaning solution? Was it someone else’s hair product? What would we expect the surface of the tomb to be like if various people press their heads against it day in and day out? If MS leaned her head against the wall in, say, a busy airport and found it to be oily, would she be amazed or suprised?

Speaking only for myself here, as an educated person who is a devout and observant mainline Protestant–but not by any means a theologian.

I would lean toward 1, believing in 3 as the explanation if others didn’t hold up. If understanding the incident were important to me, I would invest thought and research in both 1 and 3 with regard to this specific matter, and probably pray about it as well.

Let me explain a little more what I’m after here. I’m asking about epistemology — how do we know what we know? Is there truly an objective way of knowing, one accessible to everyone?

The closest thing we have is science and critical reasoning. And those tell us that if there are countless people having super/preternatural experiences, and these varying experiences confirm a myriad of different beliefs about different religions or Truths, then something else is going on.

They also tell us that throughout the entirety of our history, humans have used religious and supernatural mythology to explain phenomena they do not understand. Most of these phenomena were eventually found to have ordinary explanations.

Science also tells us that what we think of as our “consciousness” isn’t as perfectly and objectively aware as we think it is. Our brains are constantly showing us things that either aren’t there or are assumed to be there. Countless studies have shown that our awareness and perception and memory can be manipulated and outright tricked.

I believe that weird, “supernatural” things happen. But I think they get filtered through our imperfect human perceptions the same way all other information does.

Rod thinks he has had supernatural experiences that confirm his religious preconceptions. I’m pretty sure Franklin said he had some that confirmed his Pagan beliefs. That amazon tribe was sure they saw demons dancing on the other side of the river. Cosimano can teach you psionics.

You can’t all be right, but’s it’s very possible that you’re all not 100% wrong.

My attitude toward both the miraculous and the paranormal is the standard Catholic rebuttable presumption of skepticism.

I’d like to share something else about how we filter these things through the lens of our worldview:

When I was a child, my sister and I saw the ghost of our recently deceased upstairs neighbor (we were using her apartment for storage after her death, and my sister and I had been hunting around for our Tinker Toys). I saw our neighbor’s ghost as clear as anything, and my sister did, too.

After the encounter, I accepted it uncritically as part of the world, along with God, Santa, and other mysterious stuff. I rarely thought about it.

When I became an atheist as an adolescent, I had occasion to recall the experience, and I decided that I MUST have imagined the experience, despite my sister remembering it as I did, because it was a lot more likely that we were both deluded than that scientific materialism was wrong. After that, I again rarely thought about it.

Years later, having reverted to Catholicism for rather dry, intellectual, metaphysical reasons after a tour through various religions and agnosticisms and atheisms, I recalled the experience again, and filed it under something like “I guess that DID happen, but it’s hardly worth dwelling on.”

I’m not tempermentally drawn to “spooky” stuff like ghosts and Marian apparitions, so I really do think about this sort of thing pretty rarely.

However, what I think is interesting here and worth sharing in a comment is that my supposedly “scientific” youthful materialism led me to *dogmatically deny the evidence of my own eyes.* Which is a bit ironic: we all wear blinders of one sort or another.

This appeared this week in an online Orthodox parish bulletin in a friend’s parish. She knows the people to whom this happened. …
Second, what do people of non-Christian religions, or no religious belief at all, make of it?

This story sounds like a classic friend of a friend urban legend. So my skeptic hackles raise on the back of my neck right away. I would tend to discount it unless better evidence comes along.

Let’s say that our friend Jim Bob goes on a trip to India, finds himself in an ashram, and has a mystical experience involving a sexual encounter with the goddess Kali — one that is witnessed by a fellow visitor to the ashram. What happened?

Have you ever watched the television show “Ghost Hunters”? It’s basically a case study in human suggestibility. So I’d really be suspicious of Jim Bob’s claim.

But take heart, believers in the supernatural. If we find ourselves in a horror movie, I’ll be the genre blind character who insists there must a rational explanation why the dead are walking, and then end up as a zombie’s dinner.

mohammad ,
I really enjoyed reading your comments. Thank you.
One of my children attended a Catholic college & each Saturday she & some of the other students would pray outside the nearest abortion clinic.They’d get all kinds of verbal abuse from folks driving/passing by.She said the only affirming words they received were from someone who identified themself as a Muslim.

I am not sure why anyone doubts the inexplicable. Some miracles may even have a natural explaination –in my mind that does notin any manner make any less miraculous. Miracles are not limitted by natural phenomenon. For example, a something naturally ocurs but it arrives orbecomes of use at a most opportune moment.

Someone in the process of cleaning out theirhome in the middle of foreclosure finds and old bondworth enough tocover the hom’s entire cost or just enough to forestall foreclusre. Soomeone, suddenly gets a call that their services are needed,after being out of work for years. A person about to take their life gets a call from an old friend. A miracle is not confined to healing or appearances of spirits and/or angels. People trapped in vehicle for days are discovered still alive afer days of being missing. Read enough war stories, listen to vetswho have ben in battle and one can hardly dismiss te inexplicable,

In recent years somenumber of medical professionals have begun to investigate the power ofprayer in healing – some may conclude that in itself is a miracle.

I don’t have explainations for alien visitors and while I would like to lean in the direcion that they benevelont if they exist. I am a little concerned that beings intending to benefit humankind is into kidnapping and probing against one’s consent. But too many professionals in the field of aviation, physics and the military have had experiences one can explain as lightening balls.

I absolutely believe in demons without question. And tend to lean in the direction that most ghosts are not really past humans – though possible but creatures of a more sinister nature. I think that there are evil people. And people posessed by spirits. I generally accept people’s tales of ghosts and demons as they tell them with an open mind but healthy skepticism. Because unless, I can chalenge the matter with evidence — or the tale is so outlandish as to defy any sense — it is their experience.

There’s story I listened by reporter Brian Bethel that frightens(?) me to this moment. And I generally have a forward leaning attitude about such experiences. But his narrative leaves an uneasing feeling – very uneasy.

A lot ofstuff one can laugh off. But there’s enough to indicate there is a supernatural existence in the here and now.

I had an experience that it not been for the presence of my younger brother at my side the entire time — experiencing the same event — might have left me with a more skeptical world view.

As an unbeliever, I hear this anecdote as a story. I don’t expect to be able to “explain” people’s stories. People tell stories for all sorts of motives, and at second or third-hand, who’s to say where the story came from?

Stories are constructed things, designed by the story-teller to have the effect they have, dependent on suspension of disbelief. It’s easier to suspend disbelief if the story conforms to your initial assumptions. As a nonbeliever, this story doesn’t speak to my initial assumptions at all, so my emotional reaction is something like “whatever.”

There just isn’t enough information in the anecdote, as told, to get a clear idea of what might have actually happened, if anything. Who knows what details were left out? What was exaggerated? What was just made up? How can you test any of it?

I think this might be an interesting datum in terms of RD’s questions about the function of conservative story-telling. This is a conservative story. Personally, I don’t find it compelling, but others might.

[NFR: What makes it a "conservative" story? Why shouldn't someone who believes in socialist economics believe this story? You are, I think, imposing a cultural view of Left and Right onto this story, versus an economic one. How would a Randian view this story, as a "conservative" one or a "liberal" one? -- RD]

Miracles to me are things I thank god for showing me. The pair of fox boxing on top of a huge round haystack. The connection between the root and limb of a tree. The vine snake stretched across the branches and stretching to reach the next vine. The vultures and hawks dancing together in a thermal. The sparks off the lightning bolt, or the reflection of lightning far away over the horizon. The falcon swooping under my trees and grabbing a sparrow in front of me or the hawk flying right over my shoulder and grabbing a pigeon on the road in front of me, and then dropping it because it was too heavy. My dog grinning at me being funny or another dog running under a moving van and not getting smashed, or another puppy flying out the back of my truck at 50 mph and disappearing all day and night before being found. Not miracles? Well for me, they beat oil in the ear, and demonstrate to me the blessings of a living god. And so I ask ya’all, what else could miracles possibly be for? And when you see one, what could possibly be the point in debating with somebody else whether or not it really was a miracle?

Mormons believe that God gives every people at least some truth and we will ultimately be judged based on our adherence to what we received. I think that I would speak for most Mormons when I say that our faith and spiritual worldview does not preclude people of other faiths having visions, miracles or other spiritual manifestations occur to them. For example, it is not an uncommon believe among Mormons that Mohammed really did see God and was inspired to start Islam for his part of the world. So I do not find what happened at the tomb automatically false or unbelievable as a Mormon.

I say that a Mormon can be OK with anyone else’s spiritual visions and experiences as long as said experiences aligns with some element of the truth as we understand it. So for the goddess Kali example, I would agree with your assessment, nothing happened or it was some kind of evil influence.

I don’t really have any take on this either. It could be true. It could have some natural explanation. It could be somewhat delusional. But most of all, it is personal. What the person experienced, they experienced, and while they may not know what to make of it, or what they make of it may or may not be true, certainly nobody else is in a better position to know. So, as with many things, I leave it between them and God.

I don’t believe in Kali, but I don’t believe in demons either. At its most advanced Brahminic level, Hinduism is about many manifestations of a single deity, so its not too different from the Trinity, only more facets. Actually, one unfolds into three into many more. If you listen to a Tamudic scholar long enough, you can get the impression of a many faceted God also, although the rabbi will always say, no, you don’t understand, that’s not it at all.

My personal experiences have been very mild, and I’m content to recognize the broad outlines without getting into the details. What you experienced, you experienced. If it can’t be reproduced, its of little concern to me. Now if you experienced a coronavirus that can go endemic, that’s of great concern to me.

I think most Hindus would take a dim view of anyone who claimed to have sex with Kali. That said, there is really not much in the way of Hindu ‘church structures’, so there have been particular Hindu groups in the past who got up to all srts of weird practices (including, famously, worshipping Kali with human blood sacrifices).

C. S. Lewis famously speculated (in his ‘Perelandra’ trilogy) that there might be supernatural entities out there that were neather clearly angelic nor demonic. I have trouble believing that there were no supernatural entities behind the Hindu (and other pagan religions), but I don’t know what exact kind they were.

Pre Vatican II Catholic thought–and probably post as well, though the book I recall was earlier–included the idea that there could be natural (psychological or psychosomatic) causes for such “supernatural” events as the stigmata. This did not of course imply that all those who experienced the stigmata (the wounds of Christ) were hysterical people who thought/imagined/worked themselves up into the physical manifestations.

My point in raising this is that our encounter with the world, with reality, is not simply that of an objective “out there” confronting our individuated consciousness. Instead, it’s a much more complex interplay involving culture, subjectivity, and the interplay of what we (probably simplistically) call subjectivity and objectivity. There is no “utterly present” objective world that can be confronted by a wholly receptive individuated consciousness. This idea is a massive oversimplification that modern science gave a huge push to (though it’s based upon ideas present in ancient Greek thought), but that philosophers such as Heidegger have pushed back against.

My own epistemology of such things is based on my not-adequately-formulated concepts as laid out very generally above. On a personal note, I’ve noticed those who follow primordial religions (Native American, and to a smaller degree African, in my limited experience) seem to be much more comfortable in negotiating the paranormal/normal or natural/supernatural distinction, to the degree that it’s disconcerting at times even for me, whose tolerance for “give” and permeability is probably higher than most highly educated Euro-Americans.

Regarding Islam and religious pluralism and flexibility: the horrific consequences of the US allying itself with Wahabbist and Salafist Islam in Afghanistan/Pakistan in the 1980s, via the use of Saudi money and influence, has been a disaster for local forms of Islam, where at the tombs of local pirs, shaiks, or saints in Sind, the Punjab, and other South and Central Asian regions, both Muslims and Hindus used to pray. Such sites are now under attack both ideologically and literally; and the forms of Islam that they embodied have suffered immensely. Of course an analogous decay has occurred within Hinduism, with the rise of narrow, blinkered forms of fundamentalism.

I’m very grateful that you think about this a lot, Rod. You express your thoughts so very well.

I represent the modern Pagan perspective. I have my personal (and very closely held) opinions to go with my experiences in this area, and I can only offer my understanding of others’ points of view, including that of my Wiccan siblings in faith.

We live in an “energetic” world. We all perceive the “grosser” manifestations of it, either by proxy (compasses for magnetism) or with frightening immediacy (lightning for electricity).

I perceive the subtler manifestations. Some of them are easily, physically accesible to others: Sunlight on my skin, wind over my body, the sounds of nature. Some, not so much, and therein lies Rod’s illumination of it. Our threshold of subtlety determines our level of skepticism. Some, like myself, seem to be accutely sensitive, and we live a rather lonely metaphysical existence because the vast majority of the rest of you simply cannot walk even a step in our shoes… and believe me, overall it’s not something I believe should be craved, though not for the reasons as implied by EliteCommInc. BTW, Elite, I’m one of those people you should avoid. I say that with friendly intent.

I don’t speak to ghosts. I don’t gather the spirits to find lost objects or make predictions about the future. My experiences are completely contained in my core belief in the immanence of the divine all around me, in every thing, person and process I encounter.

The rest is my subjective use of labels to describe and to try to explain. I’m not shy about discussing it, but it really doesn’t work very well other than in person with no time limit about which to worry (and a good supply of food/snacks and one’s preferred libations).

[NFR: Readers, Franklin and I have drunk beer together. I can't speak for Franklin, but I assure you that that Pagan and this Orthodox Christian have more in common than this Orthodox Christian has with secular materialists. -- RD]

Human beings have concepts for talking about these kinds of things–natural concepts and supernatural concepts. The issue is that, while the concepts individually overlap to some extent, they are all different and distinct. Human beings will probably never have any uniform way of addressing these types of reports (unless we all convert to the same religion or anti-religion). It is interesting that at Pentecost, people spoke and understood other languages, but language itself was not unified (as it was prior to the Tower of Babel).

I had a paranormal experience as a child of 5. I was visiting my grandmother and we went to bed in her bed. The quilt fell off the bed twice and she picked it up. Then she turned on the light and we saw the quilt crinkle and slide off the bed exactly as if a hand were pulling it. She said someone was trying to tell us something and she had to think about it.

After a few minutes,she decided we had to check on the neighbor. She lifted me up to his window and there he was dead on the floor.

After the police removed the body,she said we could sleep and Mr. S wouldn’t bother us anymore.

I’ve thought about this incident over the years. I’m in my 60′s and my grandmother’s explanation seems the simplest one.

My general perspective is to be what Marcello Truzzi called zetetic. That is, I try to make as few a priori assumptions as possible and to keep an open mind, while at the same time not accepting any and sundry claims, and realizing that, as Truzzi said, “An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof.”

Re Jim Bob and Kali–have you seen what she looks like? I doubt Jim Bob would come back to tell the tale…. More seriously, I’d say the following:

I don’t assume 1, as I’m not a materialist. I’m not a Hindu but a Christian, but I don’t assume a priori that what non-Christians call “gods” are necessarily what Christians call demons. After all if one distinguishes “gods” as powerful, quasi-anthropomorphic spirit intelligences, pagan gods aren’t a lot different from saints and angels. Also, I follow C. S. Lewis in That Hideous Strength in allowing for the possibility of created sprit beings subordinate to God but not what we’d call either “angels” or “demons”, and which might be anywhere on the good/bad/neutral spectrum.

Thus, whether or not some being that Hindus call “Kali” exists or not, and such a being does exist, what such a being actually is, is something for which I have no answer, and no way of obtaining an answer. In that regard, even if I assumed what Jim Bob experienced was real, I’d be agnostic about assigning it to categories 2, 3, or 4. “If what Jim Bob experienced was real” is the kicker here.

If I knew Jim Bob personally, knew him to be honest and not prone to being easily deceived, and if there were physical evidence of the encounter–photos, films, medical reports–then I’d agree that something happened. I might even agree that it was a true paranormal (or preternatural) even, since I don’t exclude those. I would probably be hesitant, on the basis of a single experience like this, to commit to saying it was Kali, or an entity, or a demon; I’d probably say, “I don’t know.”

Now if I experienced such a thing myself, I’d have to judge things experientially. Basing my view on direct experience,I might then be dead certain it was Kali (although I’d rather it were her benign aspect, Parvati!), or a demon, or an entity. In such a case, it’d probably have a profound effect on me either way–I’d probably go see a priest for prayers against evil, or convert to Hinduism, depending upon the nature of my experience.

I don’t think there’s ultimately any objective epistemology by which one can decide. If it happens to me, I’m going to have an opinion (though even there, I’ve had a few weird things happen to me on which I maintain an agnostic stance). No matter how sure I was, I wouldn’t expect someone else to believe me. If it’s someone else, the first issue would be determining if he’s crazy; and if the answer to that is no, then I’d admit something without needing to say what it was. If he continued to have enough experiences like that, and was passionate enough in his belief, he might convince me or others; but I’d have a pretty high bar. You might not be crazy, and what you experience might be real, but that’s different from committing to belief in your interpretation of said event.

As to the person and the oil, I don’t have enough knowledge about the particulars or the people involved to have an opinion one way or the other.

- our brains lie. The brain has a bias towards meaning, and will often suggest things – visual, auditory, and so on – that aren’t really there. The bear in the fog that on second glance becomes just an ordinary stump, is one example of this.

- mundane miracles. Icons weeping, bumps in the night, noise. Want to know my reaction to these kinds of things? It’s “Really…a parlor trick is the best you can do?” I feel sorry for people who are duped or are titilated by this kind of thing.

I certainly believe that miracles can happen and I don’t think science has all the answers, but it seems to me that most so called miracles are just wishful thinking or self delusion.

I my frame of mind has been influenced too much by Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and a science education to properly address the matter. That and a seemingly miraculous experience I had in my younger days, the reality of which is uncertain in my own mind.

There’s lots of things going on out there. Spiritual beings, I have problems with, miraculous happenings, I generally have problems with as well, but then, strange things do happen, all the time in fact. Is it a sign from a god or something else? I do not know.

I do know, from considering such things, that it is a good thing that no orcs, trolls or other such creatures actually exist. It’s good that the undead do not exist (really really good). It’s good that demons and devil and other underworld beings do not exist (not in any real world sense anyways), and that this is a truly awesome thing (they are supremely nasty).

Miraculous events I can buy, spiritual beings of an otherworldly nature, not so much. Actual beings from other planets, I can believe in, but evidence first please.

I think Hume’s argument is sound, and applies here. To paraphrase: what we mean when we say natural law is a generalization that is confirmed by a very large number of observations. As Hume said, a person in apparently good health dying is not a miracle, it’s just unusual. A dead person rising is a miracle, in that based on an overwhelmingly large number of observations, it never happens. The more unlikely an explanation for event is, the more evidence we need to accept it. (i.e. if you see hoof prints, expect horses not zebras). So if I posit that Jim Bob and his friend hallucinated, well, mass hallucination is unusual, but not unheard of. A goddess materializing is actually much more unheard of than mass hallucination.

if od was going to undo the rules of the universe He created – I kind of think He would do it for something bigger than a bit of oil in the ear.

Miracles are rare – consider the level of proof the RC Church requires to proclaim something a miracle -

[NFR: This event at the tomb of a saint may or may not be authentic, but surely saying that it's not true because it's not the kind of thing God would do (through His saints or directly) is a very risky position to take in light of the Bible. -- RD]

As a Catholic, of course I have no problem with the basic concept. Our Easterners have very similar traditions and we have our own that mirror them. The only thing I wonder about is what is the status of the “miracles” or “wonders” of contrary “saints”? There are some who are considered saints in the Eastern Orthodox Church who we would consider heresiarchs and vice versa. Demonic influence on behalf of the antisaint? Wishful thinking amongst the antiFaithful? I guess I’ll see some day.

I know a woman in her seventies who, as a young girl growing up in Teheran, was once attacked by a demon while she slept at night. The demon tried to smother her. She was able to scream, and her older brother came running into the room and fought it off.

The demon was in the form of a cat.

Is there truly an objective way of knowing, one accessible to everyone?

I don’t know if this fits exactly with this question, but my dad – who is 73 – has been basically a committed atheist all his life; he may hem and haw a bit about “unknowability” now and then but he still very much is. Yet he also believes he has a guardian angel. What sort of being he thinks this is, I don’t know; perhaps some kind of energy that science hasn’t learned to detect yet? He attributes to it numerous escapes from life-threatening situations, but most interesting to me is a dream he had several years ago. This being appeared to him wordlessly, and he was filled with a sense of peace and assurance that taxed his (considerable) powers of verbal expression. Ever since that dream, he’s had absolutely no fear of death.
Me? I’m a Christian (which he’s learned to live with, although he thinks I’ve become a “homophobe”) and pray for him every evening, so I believe it’s an angel of the sort we Christians believe in.

I believe in just about everything, so these stories don’t surprise me.

But to answer the epistemological question, of how such things occur, I’d have to say that my cosmological view of the universe is that it is entirely alive, in every part and pattern, and that this means everything is conscious, and that we interact with everything in a conscious manner (even if most of that occurs “subconsciously”, meaning at a level of consciousness beneath our waking mind).

I don’t think any one religion or dogma has all of this correctly understood. The question about Kali is amusing to me, in that I have a statue of Kali on my desk, along with quite a few other icons and images. To me, all of these representations are real, and very much alive, in the sense that the cosmos is filled with all sorts of living forces and archetypes which take on a consciousness simply because the entire universe is alive and conscious, as is every part of it.

One could look at any pattern of things in this world, and find a consciousness, even a person, associated with it. It’s no different in principle from the fact that our own bodies, composed of trillions of cells and parts and pieces functioning together, is conscious of itself as a single “person”, whom we call ourselves. That seems perfectly natural to us, even though it really makes no sense at all in any objective sense. Well, I’d say that Gods like Kali are real in the same way, that the archetypal forces of the cosmos functioning in a coherent manner give rise to higher and lower “persons”, who in their own consciousness feel just as naturally themselves as we do. And they interact with the rest of the universe just as we do.

In a greater sense, these “persons” are not actual entities, but the same is true of us. If we delve into our own sense of self, there’s no actual entity there either, just a complex set of structural patterns of body and mind that function coherently, giving rise to this personal sense of being a conscious character. But it’s a very shifting sense of being and self that we have, never actually the same, and not reducible to some inner “soul” that we can ever say is “us”. Belief in such a soul is based on the mere fact that however much we change, we still feel ourselves to be “us”. But that, too, changes. The only eternal feature of our being is the mere fact of being conscious and alive, and that doesn’t change (even when the body and its brain dies).

This is why “miracles” occur. Because the universe is alive, and responsive to us. The universe is filled with conversations, endlessly going on, and it’s only a matter of how much we rescue from our subconscious, to consciously experience. A saint is someone who has become awake and alive to this living quality in the universe, to God in other words, and who can function at that level more consciously than most of us, and who can therefore be a point of “intercession” with God, which merely means someone who can help us see and experience more of this living quality in the universe, and help open us to the real nature of ourselves, and all things.

That person doesn’t have to belong to some special religion that has the secret handshake that unlocks God’s universe. They just have to cultivate this sensitivity to the living nature of reality. That’s what’s at the heart of all religious cultures, Christian and Hindu and Buddhism and Shamanistic. This direct experience of the living universe, of God as a living force of Being pervading all things, is what gives religion its real power. Believing that only one’s own religion has this power is just one more illusion to overcome. Saints and miracles occur all over the world, in every religion, and even among people with no religion at all.

In this same sense, “evil” also has a living force to it, in the sense that wherever there is a pattern of darkness and diseased spirituality, there is a conscious force associated with that also. It’s not real in any ultimate sense, but it is living all the same, in a disturbed and distorted manner that we all know and suffer. Those underlying patterns can change and shift as well, depending on how we live, and what we choose to give our energy and attention to.

The whole of this life is determined by what we give our conscious energy and attention to, for this creates the person that we are, and it attracts others to us in the same pattern. That’s the essence of what spiritual and religious discipline and practice is about. We are all spiritual beings, creating the spiritual world through our energy and attention in every moment, and though the patterns of that in the whole course of our lives. That’s why it’s important to live a life of discipline and love, because these things are alive, and lived in relationship to a living universe. There is no dead space in which what we do doesn’t matter. Even our unconsciousness is a living force, just one we are not aware of. But it has a personal life to it as well, and we need to become aware of ourselves as much as we do of the universe itself.

OK, Rod–I’ve just started Authors of the Impossible, and I’ve read some of Kripal’s stuff, but not all, so I obviously missed that reference. If he really did make it with Kali, he’s lucky to be alive….

A dead person rising is a miracle, in that based on an overwhelmingly large number of observations, it never happens.

Dead people come back to life all the time these days, thanks to medical science. People with stopped hearts and no breathing are brought back to life commonly with defibrillators. We even do heart transplants, which require a stopped heart for a long period of time. One has to redefine “death” to say that the dead don’t come back to life these days. Which we have. It’s why we don’t declare “time of death” until long after the usual signs of death have appeared, and only when doctors have given up trying to revive the person.

Are doctors “miracle workers”? Well in a sense, yes. But in another sense, miracles are just a higher technology being used. And I’d say that when religious miracles take place, it’s also an example of a higher technology being used, by those who understand the conscious nature of the world, and are able to make it work for the sake of others, or themselves. It’s not replicable by mere ritual, which is just the spiritual version of a cargo cult. It requires a real understanding and sensitivity to the living nature of the consciousness that connects us all by the very nature of our own being, and a facility in the actual living relationship this entails. It can’t be done by mere book knowledge or rituals, it requires a living intelligence to come awake in us, even if only for a moment.